Are we cutting back too much?

Being on a budget is in style right now. If you’re not making your own presents for the holidays, shopping at second-hand stores, and canceling your winter ski trip, you are seriously passé.

Recent news stories support the thrifty trend: Articles in The San Francisco Chronicle reported that 22 percent of Americans are skipping doctor visits, 84 percent are cutting back on spending on themselves, 30 percent plan to spend less on service providers such as hair dressers and gym instructors, and 59 percent are scaling back on holiday gift giving.

This all makes sense. The economy is tanking, people are losing jobs, and many Americans simply don’t have the cash to spend.

There are actually some positive outcomes in all of this. People are saving money, and consuming much less stuff, something most of us all have too much of. The holidays are finally less focused on material items and more about helping out those in need, spending time with family, loving our children.

But have some of us gone too far in our penny pinching?

There are people who still have jobs yet they’re getting in on the trend and scaling back dramatically. I am one of those people (yet after gloating publicly about being gainfully employed I’ll probably be laid off). Yes, my husband and I are bringing in the same income we were making last year. But a few weeks ago my husband’s company went through a round of lay-offs and even though he didn’t receive a pink slip, we literally freaked out and started to count every penny. And it’s not as if there was much to cut back since we’re already shopping at thrift stores, making our own wrapping paper, re-using Ziploc bags, picking up free furniture off the street (you should see the chair I scored last week). We axed our Saturday morning visit to the coffee shop for morning buns. We no longer eat dinner at the taqueria, where our family of four can eat for less than $20. We reduced our son’s preschool schedule from four to three days a week (which means I’ll be working even more at night). And then we decided to skip the Christmas tree, a decision that absolutely devastated my daughter.

My father called the other day after returning from a trip to Florida.

So he had a point, and that’s when I started to think, “Am I taking this too far?”

And then I was walking around the neighborhood the other night and I passed by this Italian restaurant where we used to eat with the kids once a month, sometimes more. The owners are warm and sweet and they hug and kiss our children when we walk through the door. The place was always packed, but that night it was empty. This is when I realized that cutbacks have a rippling affect across the community. When a parent pulls her kid out of the neighborhood preschool a few days a week, the center loses income, the owner cancels her sessions with the personal trainer next-door, the personal trainer stops buying lattes at the coffee shop around the corner, and the domino effect continues.

I’m definitely not saying that we should all go out and “shop.” George Bush told us to do that once and look at where it got us. But I do think many Americans veer toward one extreme or the other. Consider Oprah who is big one day and small the next, and then big again. I fear that extremes are challenging to maintain so people easily bounce back the other direction. Maybe instead of going from buying the biggest Christmas tree to no tree at all, we should at least consider the Charlie Brown-style version you can pick up at Trader Joes. Maybe rather than going from eating out five nights a week to none at all, we should consider taking the kids out for a meal just once a week. I know the little Italian place down the street from me would appreciate it.